


Archipelago

by standalone



Series: Fucking Political Bullshit exR Coffeeshop AU [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 2017 US Presidential Inauguration, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, M/M, Protests, brief but nasty bigoted language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:18:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: Grantaire drags Enjolras to D.C.Some famously shitty things happen, but maybe some good ones, too.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Flung together in directionless singlemindedness these last few days, this piece is undoubtedly riddled with error. Please feel free to suggest corrections below.
> 
> Huge thanks to my dear friends who made suggestions, many of which you will see incorporated here. You know who you are.
> 
> Thanks to you, small glass of whiskey. You definitely know who you are.
> 
> And biggest thanks, of course, to all the real protesters, wherever and however you're doing it. See you on the marches, in the courtrooms, in the classrooms and libraries and internets. And in the history books.

**Archipelago**

" _Protest._ " Enjolras goggles at his computer. "Five fucking states are [trying to outlaw the right](https://theintercept.com/2017/01/19/republican-lawmakers-in-five-states-propose-bills-to-criminalize-peaceful-protest/) to goddamned _protest."_

Since the get-go, Lamarque’s kept saying it's gonna snowball, but somehow each new affront, still, feels farcical, unbelievable. The inauguration's not even till tomorrow, and already, this? (Even while he says the opposite, using his words to prod people into swift action, a secret voice inside of Enjolras has been whispering soothing counter-sentiments, trying to tell him it's just a spike of pent-up activity up front, that the fascist enthusiasm will dwindle, that surely the ongoing reality won't be so cataclysmic as the doomsday scenarios he's been outlining in his mind.)

Apparently this bullshit is actually going to happen.

Enjolras has been enraged, inflamed, one hundred conflicted revolutionaries crammed into one body, a dynamo of focused energy. It’s not enough, _it’s not; it’ll never be; how can one small person ever; but how can I not?; how can I give in?; indifference, Wiesel said, is the truest enemy; I must do and do and—_

“Rage suits you,” Lamarque comments, “but careful. Don’t let it grab the wheel.”

*

Resignation feels so dangerously, tantalizingly close. Already.

Jesus fuck, what kind of fucking resister does he even think he is?

*

“Call and say you won't be in tomorrow.”

“Where am I going to be?”

“In D.C.”

“Nah, Lamarque’s not even going. Didn’t you see how she’s skipping the inauguration with Lewis and Lee and all them? She doesn’t need me to—”

“With me.”

“What?” Enjolras squints at the mug of late-night coffee he’s holding. These plans ring zero bells.

Grantaire shrugs. “Those musket-grabbing dickwads aren’t gonna assassinate themselves.”

Horrified, Enjolras sets down the coffee too hard. It sloshes onto his jacket and he demands, “You're not serious?” 

At the same time, in his mind's eye, there's R, white t-shirt sleeves rolled up, hard brown arms wrapped around some kind of slim, blocky sniper rifle—Enjolras doesn't know guns, on purpose because they're terrible—coldly scoping the proceedings from a distant roost. Icy January wind whips his face; the black knit cap that's pulled tight over his ears is his only defense against the weather. His nose looks particularly hawklike like this. He takes a steadying breath, practiced, unflappable, moves his finger to the trigger, and—

“Jesus fuck, Enj. I'm not a fucking criminal.” Behind the coffee counter, Grantaire flips a damp dishtowel over his shoulder. “Well,” he demurs, “not that kind. Nah, we're gonna fuck some shut up. Just not in a way that violates the sanctity of our moral compasses.”

Enjolras is relieved. 

“Trust me,” Grantaire says. “I got this.”

Mostly.

*

Enjolras might not have given Grantaire the window seat had he known that Grantaire turns out to be extremely nervous on airplanes. 

Enjolras pats him on the back, concerned, when Grantaire bends violently over to tuck his head between his knees during takeoff.

As the plane climbs and Grantaire remains inert, he leans down too, to peek at Grantaire’s face.

“Are you okay?” he asks through a screen of awkwardly crammed-together knees and elbows.

Tight-lipped, Grantaire chuckles, then exhales a scentless white mist toward his feet, where a wadded-up flight blanket catches the vapor. “Better,” Grantaire says with a crooked grin.

Enjolras is equal parts incensed and enthralled. “You’re not allowed to—”

“It’s 2017, man. Shit’s legal now.”

“Not on an _airplane_.”

“Want some?”

“I work for a senator _._ ”

“Sorry, forgot. What do you people do? Coke still?”

Enjolras sits up to distance himself from the snark and also because maybe the businessman in the aisle seat’s starting to wonder what’s up with these two dudes crouched in crash position.

Grantaire bobs up to follow him, hair a giddy disaster. “See, man, the whole fucking point of this epic journey is—” He catches a glance out the window and loses any approximation of a train of thought. “Hoooly fuck, holyfuck we’re high up oh my god oh my...”

Enjolras grabs Grantaire by the shoulders and physically rotates him away from the windows into a hug. It’s awkward what with the seatbelts and armrest, but it does the job. In his arms, Grantaire calms down in a series of shaky breaths and muttered profanities. He starts to scan the plane, agitated gaze skipping from one end of the aisle to the other.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a person? With, like, peanuts and drinks? Where’s the peanuts-and-drinks person?” he asks Enjolras. “Why the fuck am I five thousand miles up in the fucking sky if we’re not even gonna get drinks?”

Wary of pointing out the sharp upward angle of the ascending plane, or of mentioning the terms “level out” or “cruising altitude,” Enjolras just says, “It takes a few minutes. But, you’ve been on planes before, right?”

“Sure,” Grantaire says, “I’m usually high as fuck.”

“Unlike now?” Enjolras nudges Grantaire back toward his own seat so that he can take a quick peek at the guy at his other elbow, in the aisle seat. He’s got in earplugs and seems to be snoring. Relieved, Enjolras looks back at Grantaire.

Rolling his eyes straight up and shaking his head as if Enjolras is a spectacle of pure ridiculousness, Grantaire concurs with his assessment. “Unlike now.”

“Why?”

“Pretty sure you don’t wanna see me wasted.”

Enjolras is somewhat touched by this, but simultaneously concerned. If you asked him, he’d say he sees Grantaire drunk, and often stoned, pretty much every day. If that’s not wasted, he’s deeply worried about what _is._

They’re climbing steadily, knifing through thick banks of clouds that interrupt the view out the window. Suddenly, the plane joggles—only a tiny bump, as turbulence goes, but Grantaire goes ashy, clutches at the armrests, and starts to yell, “Oh shiii—”

Enjolras does the first thing he can think of to calm Grantaire down: he grabs him by the thigh, pretty high up, almost the dick, and gives a reassuring squeeze.

Grantaire gasps. In the interval of quiet, Enjolras puts on his most soothing voice to tell the people who’ve craned their necks to see the disturbance, “It’s all right, he’s just a little scared of airplanes.”

Grantaire, plastered to the back of his seat, veins popping in his rigid forearms where they grip the armrests, should elicit only pity. When they see, though, that the cause of the disturbance is a sweating Yemeni man with wild eyes who is muttering to himself, some of the neighbors begin to whisper to each other.

“It’s okay,” Enjolras says again, sliding his hand down toward Grantaire’s knee. 

A magazine-perfect flight attendant appears in the aisle beside them, as if conjured, and inquires, “Y’all doin’ all right up here?”

 _Oh shit_ , Enjolras thinks, as Grantaire casts his frenzied gaze upon the attendant, because he’s read more than enough news accounts to know how this shit goes down.

“He’s just nervous,” Enjolras says, letting his hand remain where it is, hoping this will in some way endear them to the flight attendant who, in his rubber-haired handsomeness, is definitely queer.

“Thing is, you’re making the other passengers nervous, too, with the yelling,” the attendant begins.

“Oh, and I’m sure,” Enjolras says, going from placid to pure fire in approximately the time it took to draw that last breath, “that this has absolutely nothing to do with—” 

Grantaire leans across him, gulping hard for air. “Enj,” he says, and that’s enough. Shining an uneven smile upon the flight attendant, he says, “Please, please, _please_ , can I just have a drink?”

“Why sure!” the attendant exclaims, smiling brightly. Lowering his voice, he whispers, “I’m not really s’posed to start serving for another five minutes or so, but I’ll bump you to the front of the line. What y’all havin’?”

*

The rest of the flight’s a blur of Grantaire’s drunken charm; he befriends the first flight attendant, then two more, then the man in the aisle seat, the three-year-old who keeps poking plastic animals through the seats in front of them, an older German couple heading home from a visit to see their US-born grandbaby, and an amateur bowling team on their way to a competition in Virginia.

By the time they land, he’s had at least five drinks and is nuzzling at an increasingly uncomfortable Enjolras’s neck while Enjolras seethes to himself and rereads this week’s _Economist_ , which he first picked up while Grantaire was leaning over the back of his seat looking at cell-phone pictures of baby Greta and finished over a rousing chorus of bowling cheers.

*

They packed light; everything’s in overhead, and it’s not long before they’ve shouldered their bags and caught a ride to the National Mall.

Out of the car again, trudging through a gray early morning that threatens to rain any instant, Enjolras fumes silently for a minute, but he can't maintain a silent fume for long.

“I can't believe you,” he says to Grantaire, who's swigging from one of the little bottles he sweet-talked from flight attendant #3.

“I did _my_ job,” Grantaire says, insouciant and sloppy. “I got you here, didn't I?”

*

On a street-corner blocks from the the Mall, they meet some of Grantaire’s friends—a stocky thug of a man whose mechanic's coveralls say _Bahorel_ , and a sharp-eyed woman who's dragging a backpack bigger than she is.

“What's the plan?” Grantaire asks jovially.

“Montparnasse is getting everyone where they need to be,” the woman says. She sticks out her lip in unimpressed assessment of Enjolras. “I'm Eponine. You let him get drunk?”

 _How was I supposed to stop him?_ Enjolras demands internally. He's being blamed for something he's already mad about?

On the outside, he just says, “Hi. Sorry. _You_ ever flown with him?”

“Lemme tell you,” Grantaire says, smooching Eponine broadly on the cheek, “fly with _this_ guy, they just pour the drinks on you. We gotta fly with pretty boys more, Ep.”

She wrinkles her nose at Grantaire, who definitely smells like someone’s been pouring liquor on him. “Fine. Let’s go.” She and Bahorel take off at a quick clip. Almost as an afterthought, she asks Enjolras, “You got your speech?”

Pretty sure she’s joking, Enjolras wills his face not to break.

“What the fuck?” Eponine’s addressing Grantaire now, thank god. “Tell me he has a speech.”

“Doesn’t need one!” Grantaire laughs. 

“Am I giving a speech?” Enjolras inquires politely.

“In ...”—Eponine pulls a phone out of her hoodie pocket—“15 minutes? Yeah, bro.”

“To _who_?”

“Whom,” Grantaire interjects. “You’d really think you, of all people, would know, Enj, that in cases such as this, one uses an object pronoun; of course, an easy rule of thumb here is to consider whether you could sub in _they_ or—”

“Who the hell am I talking to, Grantaire?”

Grantaire shrugs.

“Buncha lefties with rakes and torches?”

Like pretty much everyone else around, they seem to be heading into the heart of the inauguration ceremony. He's surprised that they're not carrying signs or yelling slogans; for all any observer would know, he's just another fan here to cheer the impending dictatorship. Lines of protesters flank the pathways, holding giant signs—some vulgar, some heartfelt, some blunt. A woman in several layers of down jackets offers hugs. She is sobbing and hugging other protesters, and they sob back as they cling to her. 

Eponine and Bahorel both seem consumed by whatever they’re texting on their phones; they pause to exchange terse words here and there, then keep on, passing troops of protesters, which are growing more frequent, more numerous, and more vocal as they approach the security checkpoints. 

Eponine beckons them ahead to the side of one of the security checks. Bypassing the crowds, they follow her along a temporary fence until they come to a break guarded by two gun-carrying National Guards. 

Eponine nods at them sharply. They nod back, step aside, and act as though they don’t see the four people slip through the opening between them.

Inside of the dividers, the crowds are dense—hundreds upon thousands of people, all flocking eastward toward the molten core of the horrible action, bound and determined to watch the donning of the hellfire mantle.

Enjolras grabs for Grantaire’s hand. 

Grantaire grins loosely at him.

“You’ll do it, right?” Grantaire asks. “I kinda promised them you’d talk.” Grantaire actually sounds, for the first time, nervous that maybe Enjolras will say no. This is what gets him. Annoyed as he is at the drunk fucker, Grantaire’s done a lot to get him out here, and even if this is rank manipulation, it’s not like he’s being asked to do anything he doesn’t want to. Not really.

“Sure,” he sighs. “I’m nothing if not articulate.”

At this, Grantaire just laughs.

“No, seriously,” Enjolras objects. He didn’t mean it snidely. Speech is his livelihood. “It’s my single glory, and it loves to fuck with me. You’ve seen me struck dumb, R. It’s not a good look. Fortunately, I can usually scrounge up a pile of words when I need them, but _without_ eloquence...” He trails off.

The chanting and noise and hullabaloo have been just background chatter for him since they arrived, but he is beginning to hear a difference; the chatter in this particular part of the fenced-off carnivale is suddenly oppositional, distinctly positioned _against_ this awfulness they’ve all come here to see, and the people chanting are crowded particularly tight, now, around one stone platform, which just happens to be right behind where he’s standing.

“Up,” Grantaire says, making a stirrup of his hands to boost Enjolras atop the marble plinth. Enjolras goes up—of course he goes up, easy as air with the swift boost, and reaches down to offer Grantaire an unnecessary hand. Sauced though he may be, Grantaire’s launching himself up here already, and he squats down beside the statue to make room for Enjolras to stand freely on the open bit of platform.

The sky, blue-grey and ominous, launches a small volley of raindrops in a show of force that elicits squeals from the crowd.

“Oh fuck,” Enjolras says hollowly, for it has just sunk in that these thousands of bodies before him are here together, for a purpose, and that maybe that torches quip wasn’t just a quip. “This is fucking illegal as hell, R.”

From his hip-level, Grantaire pulls a face. “First goddamn amendment, man.”

“No reasonable person is going to interpret _freedom of assembly_ to mean you can rally angry mobs _in the secured area_ spitting distance from the Capitol on inauguration day. We’re definitely going to get arr—”

Grantaire shoves a microphone into Enjolras’s hand and gestures expectantly out at the masses. And masses they are. Holy shit, there are so many eyes on him, a gaping chirrup of silence, so many people waiting to hear what he has to say, and fuck it all, this is Enjolras’s _element_. 

He tosses his scruples aside, pushes his hair out of his face, and clicks the switch on the microphone.

It’s on. 

He’s on. 

“This is not the start of the fight,” he yells, and tries not to jump at how loud his voice booms back at him from hidden speakers, focusing the surging field full of people before him. They roar in response. “This is not the start, because we’ve _been_ fighting. Our whole damn lives, whoever we are, wherever we come from, whatever we’re up against, we’ve been fighting.

“And that’s not to say our fights are all the same. Not to say some people’s fights haven’t flung you to the ground bleeding more times than you can count. Not to say some people haven’t made it this far because the fight’s been too daunting, and when you looked for support, there was no one there. I’m not trying to say we’re the same, because we shouldn’t _be_ the same. That’s the whole point. If we’re not for all of us, we’re for none of us. Anyone who’s trying to convince us differences don’t matter, they’re trying to dominate us.”

Across the crowded expanses, Enjolras can see that he’s garnering attention. Distantly, at the edges of _his_ angry mob, there are angrier, huger mobs heckling. Hell, there are police and guards ringing this whole damn place. He will not have long, but he knows how to cut to the point.

“We will not fight on their terms.”

A scuffle breaks out in the distance. 

“A bunch of us are lucky enough to live places where it’s better. The other day, Roxane Gay said, and I’m gonna get the words wrong, but she said, [if decency and tolerance are the bubble, then I’m staying here forever](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/rgay/status/818321219372154880&sa=D&ust=1484729988525000&usg=AFQjCNGsTubFOsw4-TBCuAeeOT5zE-oaiw).”

The crowd cheers lustily. 

“But there’s this thing about the bubble. It’s got to spread. Because the thing is, there’s other bubbles. Did you ever play, when you were kids, where you fill a pan with soap water, and you blow in it with straws? It makes bubbles, I mean, obviously, but then if you blow right, you can get those bubbles to move around, to smush into each other, and sometimes they just get stuck side by side, two bubbles stuck together, but sometimes, if they bump together just right, the membranes between them pop, and those two bubbles turn into one big bubble. 

“Sure, it’s a ham-handed analogy, sorry, but really, this is what we can _do_. We’re not here to destroy anyone. We’re just trying to break the stupid, arbitrary barriers that lock us off from each other. Because it’s easy to look through a divider and say, _I don’t like those people, they’re different_. And a totally different thing to be standing face-to-face with your neighbor, who waters your tomatoes for you when you’re on vacation and always asks after your kid who’s off in college, and say to them, _Your people aren’t like my people._

Police are closing in. Up on a knee now, Grantaire’s tugging at his elbow. Distantly, a military band plays a march; the giant screens in the distance are a flurry of color. Enjolras bellows into the mic, too loud; the speakers are ringing with it. 

“And this is what the fight has to look like. It’s got to be a fight of reckless excellence, of radical decency. Cause our bubbles are stuck together—my bubble and your bubbles, they’re all stuck to the bubbles of all the people who think they’re not in a bubble in the first place, that their world is somehow the normal one and the rest of us are in isolated pockets of tolerance.

“That’s not how it gets to work. Not anymore. We know better. We’ve got to be different. Together. We’ve got to show them there’s something better.”

Police officers are pushing their way through the crowd, homing in on the portable speakers, and on Enjolras’s platform. 

“Fucking finish!” Grantaire yells up to him. When Enjolras makes no move to stop, Grantaire pulls himself up to stand beside him.

“Go forth. Force decency upon the awful. I wish we could always fight hate with love. When you can, yeah, show them radical love. Make them believe you’re real because they see your worth.

“But when you can’t fight hate with love, fight it with _whatever else you’ve got_. Don’t give up. Don’t look away. Make the haters see us. Every difference. Every nuance. All of us.”

Grantaire snatches the mic. “All of us!” he yells. The crowd yells it back, and then it’s reverberating through the air, _All of us! All of us!_ , and Enjolras is just fucking ebullient, buoyed by the surging energy of this crowd, by this massive host of infiltrators who are ducking and dodging and collapsing strategically at the feet of the approaching officers. There’s confusion and chaos and it’s just beautiful—a stormy mess of resistance walled off on all sides by yelling shitbags, punctuated suddenly by the sharp, familiar smell of pepper spray. “Now get the fuck out of here!” 

Grantaire switches off the mic, drops it to Eponine, who’s waiting at the base of the platform, and takes Enjolras’s hand. 

“Fucking excellent intro, man,” he says to Enjolras, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Intro?” Enjolras asks, confused, looking for Eponine and Bahorel, but they’ve apparently melted into the melee below.

“Packed schedule,” Grantaire says. “You were the opening act.”

“I didn’t even know—”

“Kind of the point. Figured the senator wouldn’t give the okay for you to spout off at inauguration. Might make her look bad. On which note—” he nods down at the swarming crowds “—let’s go.”

He hops down, and Enjolras follows, but in that space of maybe half a second, they’re separated by the hordes of undercover protesters and police and for some reason a few burly and belligerent men in biker jackets and bandanas, and then a woman draped in an American flag enfolds him in her arms and hustles him away, and he’s not sure why, but he lets her do it.

“Sorry, babe,” she says when they’re out of the crush. “Didn’t want the cops to nab you.” She pulls a university beanie from her coat pocket and tugs it over his curls. “I mean, make some effort at disguising yourself, huh? Let’s keep you out of jail.”

“Thanks,” Enjolras remembers to say, scanning the masses of people behind her. “Did you see the guy who was with me?”

“Sorry, boo.” She shrugs. “Good luck. Keep fucking shit up.”

*

Even with the protesters gathered thick as clumps in rotten milk, this is abhorrent.

Where he is, the protesters seem to outnumber the supporters, matched in staggeringly large number by crowd-control. He pushes back further from the Capitol; he can’t trust himself not to start a fight with some bigots right now, and he really needs to focus on finding Grantaire.

Despite the cold and rain, the atmosphere is stifling; he’s never been surrounded, like this, by so many people so desperately convinced that his ways are the wrong ways, that his life and the lives he lives for are abominations. Caught between an unwillingness to separate from where he last saw Grantaire, wherever he might have gone since, and to escape the throngs, he hovers on the outskirts of a group by one of the giant screens. He deliberately keeps his back to the images, grateful for the distraction of his busy phone. Grantaire hasn’t texted back, but ‘Ferre and Courf are blowing it up.

 **Combeferre:** Terrific soapboxing

 **Combeferre:** Courf can't stop replaying the vid

 **Enjolras:** Oh shit

He checks his news app. Protests have been popping up all over the inauguration. He’s not sure which ones are Eponine’s—for all he knows, she’s connected to a bunch of them—but he’s both pleased and horrified to see that his own impromptu speech has produced one of the most widely-distributed images of day. He’s leaning out over the crowd, looking precariously close to tumbling off the plinth, except Grantaire’s there, back to the camera with his head tilted raptly up to Enjolras and an arm twined all the way around Enjolras’s calf, holding him in place. How did he not notice Grantaire holding him? How did he miss the photographers? 

_God_ , you give him a microphone and the rest of the world falls away.

 **Enjolras:** Fuck, you think Lamarque saw?

 **Courfeyrac:** [fireworks emoji x 8]

 **Courfeyrac:** Um, does she have internet

 **Courfeyrac:** [six tongue-out-eye-rolling-smiley emojis]

 **Enjolras:** Did Grantaire text you?

 **Courfeyrac:** No?

 **Combeferre:** Don't think he has my #. Why?

 **Enjolras:** He's missing

 **Courfeyrac:** Shit

 **Combeferre:** Let me see if I can find anything out

Time passes.

 **Combeferre:** Lots of arrests

 **Combeferre:** So, possible?

 **Enjolras:** Not encouraging

 **Enjolras:** Thanks though

Finally, the phone in his hand buzzes.

This text, from an unknown number, says, “R got picked up :( Meet him @ precinct?” A second later, an address.

Pushing through a loose human wall of bikers, Enj makes a break for the street.

*

The police precinct’s a madhouse, swarming with protesters, reporters, drunk revelers, media. Enjolras is not 100% sure how to proceed. There are lines everywhere, people waiting to get information about their people, and Enjolras realizes suddenly that the police aren’t going to simply return Grantaire to him like a missing wallet; they might be keeping him, and he might be suffering, and there’s really nothing Enjolras can _do_ until he knows more, so he finds a quiet corner, texts the number that wrote him earlier and says, “I’m here.”

He gets a text back a minute later. “Sit tight.”

So he does. His phone—thanks to the outlet he’s discovered in his alcove—alerts him to the dispiriting continuation of shittiness outside, but with worry ripping him apart like he’s a paper bag full of raptors, it’s hard to even know which to be more concerned about. He just sits there and feels sick and studies the tiny screen of his phone.

Lamarque texts him. “Quite a speech,” she says. 

Enjolras thinks about texting back an apology, but decides against it because he’s not, but then decides for it because he _does_ feel bad if Lamarque gets any blowback for this. “Sorry,” he texts. 

“Filthy lies,” she writes back. “Keep your sorries. If this is day 1, you’re gonna need them.”

Enjolras has the best boss.

He thinks about mentioning Grantaire, but _this_ , he decides, is definitely not cool. He’s not sure if the senator would call in a favor to extricate him, and honestly, he’d rather not know. He’s pretty sure she cares about her staffers enough that she’d intervene; he’s also pretty sure she loves justice enough not to.

*****

**Enjolras:** Justice is a con

 **Combeferre:** What else is new

 **Combeferre:** Still waiting, huh?

 **Combeferre:** How you feeling?

 **Enjolras:** How can it possibly be enough? Why aren't I out there changing things right now instead of sitting here twiddling my thumbs

 **Combeferre:** I'm hearing you say "I feel insufficient to the task"

 **Enjolras:** Well yeah

 **Enjolras:** Obviously

 **Enjolras:** The task is 60 mil tasks, and growing exponentially

 **Combeferre:** At least you're there

 **Enjolras:** As if I'm doing anything more here than I'd do anywhere else

 **Combeferre:** You're seeing it

 **Combeferre:** We need witnesses

 **Combeferre:** II mean, some of us are just at work

 **Enjolras:** You're a librarian

 **Enjolras:** Your entire job is a 1st-Am. protest

 **Combeferre:** Gonna get that on a t-shirt

*

He sets that picture to be the home screen on his phone. Not centered on himself, of course. Has Grantaire always looked at him that way, like if you look hard enough, Enjolras might turn out to be the golden portal to another world?

*

 **Enjolras:** FUCK

A minute later:

 **Enjolras:** FUCK

He knows that Ferre is only taking his time because he's doing something else. Texting more won't make Ferre write back faster. But it gives him something to do. It makes him feel like there's forward motion, even if he's really just sinking into an abyss.

 **Enjolras:** FUCK

 **Enjolras:** WHY

 **Enjolras:** GOD

 **Enjolras:** WHY

 **Enjolras:** THIS IS THE ONLY LIFE WE GET

 **Enjolras:** WHY

 **Combeferre:** I know... the repercussions

 **Combeferre:** Hard not to think this is how our world will go

 **Combeferre:** And to mourn 

**Enjolras:** WHEN DO WE SCREAM

 **Combeferre:** Well, a) you've been screaming since I met you

 **Combeferre:** And b) are you still in police station

 **Combeferre:** Because in that case I recommend not rn

 **Combeferre:** But there will still be good, E

 **Combeferre:** We will still be happy

 **Enjolras:** AND THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE

 **Combeferre:** Yes

 **Combeferre:** But we are going to accept it sometimes anyway because, to quote, THIS IS THE ONLY LIFE WE GET

Enjolras laughs out a sorrowful bark of a laugh. His chest feels as though it's rending itself apart.

 **Enjolras:** Fuck you

 **Combeferre:** You too

Hours later, he’s drafting a resolution for Lamarque in the notes app on his phone, abbreviating most words to nonsensical shorthand because phone-typing is the worst, when he looks up and saints alive, there’s Grantaire, looking dark-eyed and ragged and vaguely heroic—like he’s the guy who got arrested so you didn’t have to.

Enjolras clambers to his feet and throws his arms around Grantaire, who staggers a little with the impact. 

“You—What?” he asks, gesturing as if to indicate Grantaire’s freedom and presence here and lack of notice and... _all_ of it, really.

“They didn’t really know what they had me for,” Grantaire shrugs. “They thought it was me up there with you, but apparently none of the photos show my face. And anyway, what kind of crime _is_ that even? And then they thought about public drunkenness, but it took them so damn long to process me I was basically sober by then, and I got snotty and asked if it’s open season on Muslims now, and the clerk or whatever gave me this _look_ ,” he says, imitating the censorious glare a person might make over a pair of heavy glasses, “and then I was getting out. They even gave back my phone and the booze bottles. Both useless now,” he adds sadly.

“You’re not even Muslim,” Enjolras says, grabbing onto the wrong bits of the story. “Are you?”

“Used to be. We out of here? I could go for a drink.”

*

Against Enjolras’s wishes, they stop at the bar next to the police station so Grantaire can take a few quick shots. Enjolras has a glass of water and an internal fit. 

How the fuck dare Grantaire make him spend the afternoon drowning in worry just to come out and get sauced? Enjolras is incensed. This isn’t what he came here for. He’s not totally sure what he _did_ come here for, but surely it wasn’t to watch Grantaire hide from his problems while the nation burns.

The bar’s full of off-duty officers and bikers—an unlikely alliance that makes Enjolras deeply uneasy, especially after Grantaire takes his second shot and starts shooting off at the mouth.

They’re only there for ten minutes, but it’s getting dark out when they leave. Grantaire, who claims to know this city pretty well from his past stays with Eponine, leads them around the corner to a smaller street in what he insists is some kind of shortcut, then pauses at the mouth of an empty alley. “Hold it a sec,” he says, ambling away into the gloom and unbuttoning his fly.

Enjolras kicks at the curb and tries hard not to be mad. He’d pull out his phone to check the latest, but there’s no way that will help. He glares at the sky—cloudy and dark, ready to rain again at a moment’s provocation—and pulls off the stupid beanie he’s been wearing since that woman stuck it on his head earlier. 

Right then, he hears heavy footsteps. A bunch of them.

"Hey! I know you." Enjolras doesn't want to look up, but he does. "Yeah, I know you for _sure_ , motherfucker." It's yet another biker, decked out in thick black leather and questionable facial hair, flanked by half a dozen friends. "This is the cocksucker who was up on the thing yelling. Saw him on the fuckin' news later too."

"What'd he say?" demands one of the guy's friends, who is zipped up tight in a black leather motorcycle jacket. She spits heartily—not exactly _at_ Enjolras, but definitely in his direction.

"Buncha kumbaya bullshit, sounded like," the guy says, stepping closer. "Nothin’ to write home about. Tryna get a lil attention? Make this about you? That right, bitch?"

Enjolras feels the challenge like a knife at his ribs—back down, let it go, they'll probably let him walk away. But Grantaire's down the alley behind him pissing (he’s pretty sure he’s pissing; if he’s hurling, Enjolras is going to be _so much madder_ ), and irritated though he may be, Enjolras isn't about to leave him behind. And anyway, what did he even say earlier? About convincing people any way they can? If this isn’t the time, when the fuck is?

“It’s not about me,” Enjolras spits out. “It’s about us. Us Americans. I said we're better than this." Fear tastes bittersweet in his mouth; he gnashes his teeth and ducks back against the brick wall. There's no one else on this street right now, just this asshole and his posse. He just hopes Grantaire stays in the alley. If he's about to get beaten, at least no one else has to see.

"Better than?" snarls the man.

"Better than harassing strangers 'cause they disagree with you."

"What, like you're not harassing us, showing up here at a fucking national celebration spoutin' your libtard ass-polish, spitting on the real Americans who built this country with their sweat and tears?"

"Our nation is built on dissent," Enjolras says. His mouth is dry, his breath coming fast, but the words are here for him. "Regardless of our differences, I hope you can concur that the freedom to disagree is the cornerstone of true democracy."

Grantaire chooses this moment to slouch back out of the shadows of the alley.

"Thanks for—oh, hey," he says, seeing the several angry bikers who loom between Enjolras and the freedom of the street. He slouches into a spot against the wall next to Enjolras, eyes heavy and scruffy jaw jutting loosely forward like he's too out of it to care whether his teeth match up. As if entirely unaware of Enjolras's nervous, rigid fury, Grantaire slides a hand around Enjolras's nearest fist. With his other hand, he salutes their astonished audience. “Vive la resistance!” he says, accent impenetrable. "’Sup, guys?"

There's no other word for it—the bikers gawp. 

"Ho-oly shit," one of them drawls. "You know this fucker had a gay terrorist boyfriend?" 

"Down in the cackalack, they wouldn’t be so cocky, touchin’ on each other front of us.”

“Down home, they’d know what was coming,” laughs the woman in their group, humorlessly.

The lead guy takes another step forward. He's punching distance from Enjolras now. Enjolras spares a moment for a quick glance at Grantaire, who's so still that Enjolras half-suspects he's dozing on his feet, spent from the effort of that one cheeky greeting.

Therefore, he’s surprised when, under Grantaire’s hooded eyes, Enjolras catches a little hint of sparkle. Grantaire's fingertips squeeze conspiratorially at his tense wrist, and Grantaire leans toward him and breathes in his ear, warm and tingly and only carrying a very faint whiff of booze, "May I?"

It’s stupid and brave and Enjolras doesn’t at all like the way the concern and arousal churn into the fear in his gut. Unsure what he's saying yes to, but also pretty sure it's entirely irrelevant because if they weren't going to get creamed before, now that Grantaire's kissing him, slow and deliberate as a death warrant, on his cheekbone, they for sure are about to get destroyed, Enjolras mutters, "Go for it."

At his side, Grantaire drops his hand, springs upright, and transforms.

Gone is the stumbling boor Enjolras has been seething at for the last hour, replaced in one rolling-back of the shoulders by a fierce street-brawler, coiled and ready. When the first biker lunges toward Enjolras, Grantaire's there to meet him, fists flying. He gets the guy with a jab to the ear followed by a couple swift hooks to the leather-clad belly.

While Grantaire’s thus engaged, a few of the others set upon Enjolras, who does his absolute best to not just get whaled on. Grantaire has shown him a little about boxing, it's true, but usually they only get in a few minutes of lightweight living-room sparring before someone's clothes come off, so it hasn't fully prepared him for actual combat. 

_Defend your face_ , he remembers Grantaire taunting him, while tossing quick little jabs that landed like vicious kisses on his temple, nose, brow. Enjolras keeps his hands high, but these blows land hard. Seeing a chance to lash back, he loops his arm out in a quick strike at a burly attacker's exposed chin; his hand stings with the impact, but the man stumbles back very satisfactorily, and Enjolras is just congratulating himself when he takes one hard in the eye and goes down, narrowly avoiding a nasty collision with a stone bench. 

From here, he struggles to right himself. Through his good eye, it seems like Grantaire’s fighting two people at once: the woman who spat at him earlier and one other dude. Forced to the wall, Grantaire wheels around, shoves the man away with a forearm to the throat, and throws off the woman, who has been punching him in the side of the face. Unlike the men Grantaire’s felled, who seem to be nursing their wounds on the ground, the woman comes back at him.

Grantaire squares up.

"You ain't gon' hit a lady?" demands one of the guys who's been hanging back on the curb.

As he says it, the woman launches a couple of sharp strikes at Grantaire’s head. The first splits the skin above his cheekbone, but Grantaire deflects the second.

"If _she’s_ hitting _me_?" Grantaire yells, punching back at the woman, whose fist is red with his blood, so that she staggers back and collapses against the wall beside her friend. "Fuck yeah, I am. I'm a fucking feminist."

That’s what drags Enjolras back to his senses: Grantaire, now facing off against the remaining three bikers, just shamelessly competent and uncomplicated in his ability to defend the shit out of himself—with his fists, with his words—and Enjolras is just lying there _admiring_ it.

He stands up, shaky but determined to ally himself with Grantaire’s greatness, to be worthy of this moment’s fight. The bikers seem to be in no hurry to close in, and despite the startlingly intense pain of the fist-sized region of capillaries leaking blood below his skin, Enjolras is getting cocky, pretty sure that they can take them—hell, that _Grantaire_ can take them, and that he can maybe not get in the way too much—when a thundering horde of reinforcements charges around the corner.

Enjolras scrambles atop the stone bench. 

The men stampede down the middle of the narrow street right at them, a muscled wall of flesh punctuated by flashes of hard metal, and Enjolras crouches as if to spring. He feels grandiose and fatalistic, feels the mob’s imagined torchfire reflecting in his eyes. Reaching for a shoulder of his jacket, he drags Grantaire up beside him. 

Grantaire, sweaty and furious, who surprises and surprises him. Fighting at his side, Enjolras decides, will not be a terrible way to go.

“After all,” he says, as if Grantaire has been privy to his preceding internal monologue, “the cost of living is that we must die.”

Grantaire breathes hard, dredging up words. “No, fucker,” he says, his bare face livid, “the cost of life is _loss_.”

Enjolras looks at him, and feels with a shock, as if newly awakened from peace to find himself in the thick of it, this heat, this madness, the absolutely stupidity of _this_ fight in the face of all the other fights he might have—all the other fights _they_ might have—a whole lifetime of conflagrations to be doused, bridges to be reconstructed. 

“Kill the fuckers,” someone yells, and the assailants are literally seconds away. Enjolras tries his best to ready himself, but Grantaire throws an arm in front of him, holding him back.

Considering their level of physical familiarity, he really doesn't know very much about this man. God, he feels like an idiot.

“Jesus,” Grantaire groans, shaking his head bitterly, black curls flopping, “Have you never fucking loved?”

And pushing Enjolras behind him into the wall, he leaps off the bench as if to block singlehanded the onslaught of blows. 

But then, right as the fists and flashing knives and baseball bats descend, right then, above them in a sky too thick with clouds to show, a firework explodes, close and loud, and then another, and then—good god, Enjolras has never before appreciated this sound with such heart-pounding fervor—sirens, police cars whipping around the corner and racing toward them and, like leaves before the wild hurricane, the bikers flee in all directions and holy shit, holy shit, they’re still here, still alive.

Scrambling from the sudden fray, Grantaire grabs a stunned Enjolras’s hand and runs.

*

The driver looks at them in the rearview once they’ve merged onto the expressway. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

That _something_ happened is not a matter of question. Both of them are badly bruised and giddy with the excitement of surprise survival.

“People started some shit," Enjolras says, very defensive.

When the driver asks why, Enjolras just leans over to kiss Grantaire, who is both into it and nervous because the driver's gone really quiet, hard on the lips. “That’s part of it,” Enjolras says, calmed down by the kiss. “Guess the assholes had some kind of a _problem_.” His voice is a challenge, and his jaw’s set, just daring the driver to come at him with fucking anything, but the driver just sort of nods noncommittally, and Enjolras can work with that. He ends up chatting with the guy so nicely, clutching Grantaire’s hand the whole time, that the driver's sort of warming to them, chuckling and chatting, when Grantaire spots something out the window and asks, "Hey man, can you just let us out here?" 

He drags Enjolras into the shadow of a giant sycamore and jams him up against the trunk. It’s the verge of a public park, but it’s so late now, and they’re both ravenous and exhausted and afraid about life in this new world, and it comes out as pure need.

Grantaire’s kissing at his jaw, hungry, rough—Enjolras’s skin is tender, but probably not near as tender as Grantaire’s puffy cheekbone. He leans into the touch, but can’t help exhaling hard when teeth skim the damaged flesh.

Grantaire pulls away to scrutinize him. "Didn't I tell you to defend your fucking face?" 

Enjolras can’t think about that right now. He can only think of the fluid lines of Grantaire’s muscles when fighting, precise and devastating. He pulls Grantaire in by the pockets.

Grantaire’s fighter’s hands slide under the layers of Enjolras’s sweat-ruined clothing, fishing for his belt buckle.

“Tell me we’ll get through this,” Enjolras begs, helping free the catch, but once his cock’s found Grantaire’s fist, his hands claw at Grantaire’s matted hair, pulling him close. He pants into Grantaire’s ear, “Tell me it’s going to be okay.”

Grantaire twists his wrist while he strokes, so fast you’d be forgiven for thinking, if you weren’t the fortunate recipient, that this hand-job was less the highly-refined gift of an artisan attuned to his audience’s desperation, and more a frantic and erratic race to the finish.

His face in the dark is warped with bruising. Behind him, the uncanny dark lines of tree limbs waver in the wind. “No,” he says, “it’s not.” And he kisses Enjolras full on the mouth.

He’s not thinking about work right now, really, he swears he’s not, but in his mind’s eye, he sees his boss, Senator Lamarque—in a _totally nonsexual way_ , Senator Lamarque—and Grantaire, and Courfeyrac and Combeferre and squadrons of their likeminded friends, hustling messages along cramped tunnels, radioing by candlelight, hunting down justice _together_ , because Grantaire’s right, it’s _not okay_ even if this right here, his lips open to Grantaire’s tongue, the callused skin of Grantaire’s fingers catching on his cock so that he’s moaning incautiously, even if this, him and Grantaire together alone in this cold vengeful night, is, well, wonderful. 

“No,” Enjolras agrees, gasping. “Hell no. We’re gonna— _fuck_ , Grantaire—we’re gonna fight back. We’re gonna unite, build coalitions, find common ... ground ...”

Grantaire watches him with a wary gaze that, it seems to Enjolras, may well mirror how _he_ looked right before the bikers attacked—proud and apprehensive and ride-or-die smitten. 

“Vive la resistance,” Grantaire deadpans. 

With a jolt and a cry that startles awake a nearby flock of irate and enormous Canada geese, Enjolras lets go.

*

They walk the last few blocks to Eponine’s apartment. Grantaire wouldn’t let Enjolras get him off in the park; the honking geese were, to be fair, a deterrent, particularly once one of them started pecking at Grantaire’s shoelaces. Grantaire hums as they walk and allows Enjolras to accost him with occasional caresses through his jeans—just quick grabs that clarify that Grantaire is definitely ready for it but also, as seems to be so often his way with Enjolras, making himself wait. He adjusts himself outside Eponine’s door before they knock.

Bahorel answers, then hustles them back to the kitchen where he’s stirring a pot of stew. He introduces them to a bunch of folks Enjolras has never met, and also, to Enjolras’s deep metaphysical consternation, Jehan, who only smiles the easy acknowledgment you’d expect if they were greeting each other in Musichetta’s cafe as usual, not in a serendipitous rendezvous states away in some stranger’s house.

Except Eponine’s not a stranger to Jehan, apparently, and he’s definitely no stranger to Grantaire.

Grantaire is easy with everyone, swiping them beers from Eponine’s fridge, flinging himself across the couch, entrancing the assembled audience with the recounting of his brush with the law.

“I was like, what, you arresting me for peaceably assembling?” he chortles. Jehan raids the medicine cabinet and smears ointments on their wounds.

Warming up and relaxing into the cozy apartment and the beer and the company, Enjolras becomes aware that his hand is throbbing. 

“Ice?” Grantaire offers when he ambles back from getting himself another round in the kitchen. He bundles a cold-pack around Enjolras’s swollen fingers.

“What about you?”

Grantaire shrugs. “I like ’em sore. Reminds you you’ve been fighting. Oh, hey, check that out.” He nods toward the corner of the room, where Eponine’s been holding a hurried web-call from a laptop balanced on a broken chair. 

It takes Enjolras a minute to recognize the map that’s showing on her screen, then he jumps up.

“The Musain?” he asks. 

Eponine turns and pulls out an earbud. “You know these guys, right?” She drags Enjolras onto the screen with her. At the other end, someone rotates the camera and yes, it’s definitely the Musain, and those are Musichetta and Combeferre.

Unbidden, tears film his eyes. Of all the places to find his best friend. Of all the times. 

“We’re trading notes,” Combeferre explains when asked. “You know ‘Chetta’s got connections everywhere.” 

Musichetta gives a nod and a measured wink. 

Eponine clears her throat.

“Let’s get through the numbers. Starving over here.”

It’s been a big day for the Hatemap; Musichetta shares the latest horrors. ‘Ferre’s started a spreadsheet of arrests, free-speech resources, and attorneys offering pro bono representation to protesters. Eponine’s just trying to plan the next thing, but seems grudgingly tolerant of the data-collection. 

“If we don’t know where we’ve been, how can we—” Combeferre begins, and she cuts him off.

“Where we’re going. Yeah. Got it.” But she listens, Enjolras thinks alertly, as ‘Ferre and ‘Chetta analyze the numbers in front of them. It’s inspiring, these three, each with their own little network, collaborating. But just think of all the people screaming on the streets today. Think of the millions on millions more demonstrating across the country, facing down flash-bombs and pepper-spray and water cannons and god knows what other indignities. So many groups, doing so much. Think of them all, together.

“We need to get organized!” Enjolras interjects.

Combeferre looks at him as directly as one can through a thousand miles of internet and two laptop screens. His look says that it’s about time Enjolras woke up to what they’re all doing.

“Can you come over Monday night? I have some ideas.”

“Can I bring Grantaire?” asks Enjolras.

“Of course. This is going to require quite a few of us.”

*

After a very late dinner, during which the more flexible of Enjolras’s hands keeps making its way to Grantaire’s increasingly hard cock under the table, and by the end of which, he’s almost-undisguisedly thrusting upward against that hand, a disappointingly small number of the attendees leave. Jehan, who seems to know the place well, opens up the sofa-bed, pulls out a blow-up mattress from a hall closet, and produces heaps of mismatched blankets and sheets. Thus, the living room becomes a bedroom for five. 

“Have the sofa, lovebirds,” he smiles to Grantaire and Enjolras, then flops directly into the middle of the inflatable mattress and starts to snore. Unperturbed, Bahorel and another man cuddle up on either side of him. Eponine and the remainder of the party retire to her room.

Grantaire looks at the sofa-bed, then at Enjolras, then at the trio on the mattress on the floor.

Bahorel squints open an eye. “What we don’t know won’t hurt us,” he yawns, then tugs the blankets up to his neck.

“I’m gonna go have a smoke,” he says, and walks out of the room so fast that Enjolras can’t even comment on it.

Eponine’s is an old building, and behind a nondescript leaded-glass door in the hallway, Grantaire knows he’ll find the spiral of steep internal emergency stairs that climb to the roof. Enjolras tries to climb carefully so the metal steps don’t clang too loud, since it’s just about midnight and probably plenty of people are sleeping, but Grantaire shares no such compunction.

When they get to the roof, Grantaire props the door with a brick and they step out into the open night. There are no stars, just distant booms in the clouds. An indeterminate remembrance of rain spatters down and forgets itself immediately. 

“You didn’t bring me up here to smoke,” says Enjolras.

“Who are you to tell me why I brought you anywhere?” Grantaire asks, digging a little folding pipe from his pocket. He cups his hand around the flame as he lights up, and Enjolras can’t help but watch the fire catch the wayward filaments of weed, glowing bright and fast before they blacken, then fill the bowl with orange fire.

On the second hit, he leans forward and raises a thick eyebrow at Enjolras. 

_Why not_ , Enjolras thinks, and takes the breath from Grantaire’s mouth. Kissing Grantaire is inordinately opulent anyway—the lips’ fullness and heat, the everpresent scratch of the jaw, his _smell_ like mint pulled fresh from loamy soil—and with weed added in, it’s ethereal, heady, an all-senses kaleidoscope.

“So, I brought you here for a few things,” Grantaire admits, kissing his way down Enjolras’s chest, undoing buttons as he goes. “I may have a pocket full of lube and condoms.”

Enjolras leans his shoulderblades against the outer wall of the little raised room where the staircase emerges, and lets Grantaire have his way.

It’s not the at-any-cost rushed scramble of earlier, but it’s every bit as serious. Slow, deliberate, locked in together eyes on eyes in the shadowy glints of light that reflect off the shallow puddles underfoot, they unbuckle and unfasten and unencumber the parts that need to be free. 

Grantaire slides his hands behind Enjolras’s bare ass, kneading at it, his fingers working gradually down, pulling him open. The pressure lightens for a moment, then reappears, firmer and slippery, so Grantaire may very well actually have a pocket full of lube, and when, a minute later, Grantaire’s dark eyes find his again and he asks, “Okay?”, Enjolras laughs up into him, kissing him yes, yes, yes, and turns to face the wall.

Still kissing over his shoulder, Enjolras can’t stop laughing into Grantaire’s mouth because he and Grantaire, alone together where buildings meet the sky, just miles and hours removed from an event that Enjolras would’ve really seriously predicted would fucking destroy him, are living in an America that Enjolras still feels as much a part of as he’s part of anything, as he’s part of his _speeches_ —every word his and not his, every proclamation secretly a question.

He is giddy and afraid and joyous, feeling Grantaire’s latex-covered cock press up against him, so very hard it’s a reminder that Grantaire’s been waiting for this, for him, all day—that Grantaire will always wait, like Enjolras is some undeserved award he's reluctant to claim. This, particularly, makes Enjolras love that moment when Grantaire first pushes in. They breathe together, and Grantaire waits further, so shakily patient, one hand braced against the wall to hold himself back, until Enjolras relaxes around him and he can thrust deeper. 

It feels so good, so fully, wholly satisfying, that Enjolras can’t not laugh again, even if it’s half gasps.

“Something funny?” Grantaire asks, mouthing at the back of his neck.

“Why’d you—” Enjolras begins, finding the rhythm in this slow, rich symphony of a fuck, “—bring—me here?”

A hand teases across the front of his thigh to stroke at his balls. “Aside from the obvious?” Grantaire asks. His voice, low and close in sex, makes Enjolras’s chest and throat—all his breathing-parts—vibrate from within. “Maybe I’m supposed to say it’s ... the least I can do ... but with you, anything I do with you ... is maybe the _most_ I ever do anything.

“I had to have you here.”

Damn Grantaire, who can still talk even as he wraps both his arms around Enjolras’s chest to fuck him deeper. Far away, there are more booms, and sirens and a couple of barking dogs, and here there is panting and heat and Enjolras’s arm muscles straining to hold them both off the wall, leg muscles tense, whole body bowstring-taut as Grantaire surrounds and fills him.

There’s so much contact. Even with the chill on his exposed chest and thighs, Grantaire’s heat makes him feel warm and held and, oddly, safe. Except it’s not odd. Grantaire’s saved him. Grantaire will keep saving him, probably. Grantaire might do _anything_ to save him.

“What wouldn’t you do?” Enjolras demands, fucking back particularly hard so that Grantaire’s hand slips from his balls to his cock. “If I asked?” It’s not a great sex question, really, especially considering the double negative, but one of the many many things he likes about Grantaire is that he just fucking rolls with shit.

“Nothing,” Grantaire grunts, with total alacrity. “Fucking nothing.” And yet, his body hesitates, as if perhaps, knowing Grantaire’s readiness to serve him will mean Enjolras wants less of him, not more. 

Enjolras angles his head back to find Grantaire’s mouth again. “Make me forget everything,” Enjolras whispers.

Steadily resuming movement, Grantaire nuzzles into Enjolras’s long hair till he finds the soft skin behind his ear, and touches his tongue to it, calibrating. Enjolras shudders. Meanwhile, his hand curls around Enjolras’s cock so that with each thrust he lifts Enjolras up into that pressure, so that Enjolras feels Grantaire inside him and outside him in parallel, holding and being held.

“We’re alive,” Grantaire says, so low it’s almost a shock, almost a blessing. He kisses the skin behind Enjolras’s ear again, and it feels like his whole head is buzzing with it, and with the whole-body thrill of tension that comes with each movement of Grantaire’s body on and around and in him, and then he starts to suck, sure and toothy and all-encompassing, so that Enjolras’s awareness of the world dwindles to a few points, his entire tingling spinal column connecting the dots where Grantaire breaks through him.

“Fuck me hard, Grantaire,” Enjolras says without thinking any words at all. “Make me yours.”

“Oh,” Grantaire breathes, stubble abrading the new tenderness he’s created on Enjolras’s neck. “Oh fuck, Enj, fuck, I’ll always, I’ll—”

In the rain-puddles’ shimmer, Enjolras can just make out their reflection. It’s just them, thin outlines of light in the darkness.

Enjolras is alive, and for this moment, his whole world is Grantaire. The other world will be waiting whenever he decides he's ready to finally come out of this.

His voice says, “Now!” Now. He needs Grantaire now, and Grantaire feels it and knows it, because he grips Enjolras’s straining cock tighter and is fucking Enjolras so hard and holding him so well with that arm across the chest that his thrusts lift Enjolras’s feet off the ground. He feels Grantaire swell inside of him, feels the pressure and doesn’t have to see it to know the way Grantaire’s face is screwing up, like he’s being asked to do the unthinkable and saying yes anyway. 

Grantaire bellows, and it sounds, in Enjolras’s muddled brain, like a call to battle, and that’s what tips him over, brain empty of everything but Grantaire’s voice and Grantaire’s hands and Grantaire’s smell like new growth, and when he’s finally aware of anything else again, it’s of the quavering strength that holds him upright, still, when he’s gone boneless.

“Let’s go to bed,” he finally murmurs in Enjolras’s ear. “We gotta wake up early tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“Women’s march, dude. What we came here for. Didn’t I say? This shit was just the warm-up.”

*

Lamarque’s in touch again Saturday afternoon, when Enjolras’s protest sign—unbeknownst to him; he's just trying to be supportive—makes for a second round of clickbait photos.

“What’d I say abt rage?” she texts.

But it’s not just rage.

It’s rage, and terror, and a dawning respect for persistence.

It’s letting go of control, and finding trust.

It’s purpose.


End file.
